


Prince & Courtesan

by Etnoe



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-20
Updated: 2016-08-20
Packaged: 2018-08-09 12:50:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7802527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Etnoe/pseuds/Etnoe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A shipwrecked man is given to a Prince as a gift.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Prince & Courtesan

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spookykingdomstarlight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookykingdomstarlight/gifts).



It was always hard for Prince Hikaru to decide if his lessons spent training in bedroom arts were his favourite ones, or the ones that caused him the most pain. Combat training was almost purely enjoyable even with physical rigors that left him aching, and on the other extreme, he had achieved a kind of peace in learning etiquette by rote, and broadly speaking, his lessons were ended with a sense of satisfaction at bettering himself and doing his role and his family proud. Except ... his time with his supposed courtesan...

"So?" McCoy said as he strode into the room, in the tones of a general commanding a soldier, or perhaps a soldier's _dog_. "Today?"

Hikaru shook his head. Joining him in mime, McCoy made a would-be questioning grab at his own crotch, and then another one as if he wanted to be very thoroughly assured. Hikaru's hair probably ended up in terrible disarray from shaking his head so vehemently - but at least it would help to convey the impression that he had done at least some of what he was supposed to, when he had to walk out of this private chamber and face some knowing teasing. He wondered if this was all part of the joke - McCoy's mouth was pursed in a way that he had come to suspect meant that the man wanted to laugh, but it was hard to tell what McCoy felt if in fact he wasn't truly enraged.

"No, no, stop, for the gods' sake," Hikaru said. "There will no petal-plucking taking place tonight either, o stranger to this land."

McCoy grimaced. "'Fuck'," he said pointedly to correct Hikaru, and dropped to the floor to lounge among cushions, leaving the couch to Hikaru's solo use. "I don't use petals, you know. I strongly suspect it would be unsanitary. And more attractive to bees, probably."

Hikaru corrected him in turn: "You mean 'fuck _ing_ '. In that sentence, it would have been 'there will no fucking taking place tonight'..."

"There, yes, that," McCoy said. Grammar still eluded the stranger to the emperor's lands.

His avoidance of polite courtly speech, however, was intentional. Hikaru might have been unsure how to handle such disrespect, but he knew there were very few people willing to maintain the patience required to figure out McCoy's accent; and so he often went misunderstood and ignored, nearly friendless in his day-to-day business. The man complained about it often enough and Hikaru believed it - trying to consider McCoy anything but terrifyingly honest was a task that baffled prudence and cynicism alike.

"Suppose I got lucky, being handed over to you. You gonna listen to me yet about getting me made a doctor?"

"Now? After you have been elevated to rare impurity?" Hikaru laughed - McCoy seemed to thrive off antagonism like that. (Wait; was he trying to please McCoy?)

"Can't believe you call it that," McCoy muttered. "So, it's story time, then?"

And so Hikaru's pain - terrible, embarrassing squirming - was traded for McCoy's - which had a low voice and a halved smile that spoke of it. The myth of Georgia, Hikaru was starting to suspect, was real.

McCoy could not speak so surely of tastes that had never graced his tongue. Could not display the same mode of courtesies that he described - sharper in meaning, the sweeter they sounded - if he had not be born into them to find them natural, even if, at this time of his life, they were also something worth mocking a little. There could not be so much for McCoy to miss if he had not walked on real earth, smelled real air, and done all the things that went into living there, in the place where the scientists were certain that absolutely nothing could be.

It wouldn't exactly be dangerous for Hikaru to say that he believed in what the royal court had already considered and dismissed. Impolitic, certainly; for years to come it would be effective of accusing him of everything from being easily led up to dangerous insanity.

"You need a navigator, I think," Hikaru said, apologetic at interrupting. And yet doing it anyway, oh dear ... McCoy was rubbing off on him. "And perhaps a common sailor, to find out the most likely routes a ship might have taken. It's possibly the best way to explain how yours could have come so far off course as to bring you to our shores."

"You believe me?" McCoy said rawly, now nearly jumping up from his lounging position.

"I find that, despite what the mathematics, history, and our scientists say ... what I believe i more is that you're always going to be honest."

-

It all had to happen largely in secret. McCoy's departure would be remarked on as he had been a gift to Prince Hikaru, but up to that point, Prince Hikaru could hire anyone he wanted to ask whatever oddities came to mind.

"I'm always going to wish I had something to repay you with," McCoy told him. It was dark this night; the lamps outside seemed to do hardly anything. "Big house - but you got it already. Money, the chance to talk to just about anyone you like - all I can offer is awe at your genorosity. And even that," he added, "only a little. Can't let that go to your head."

"Ah, gods, you were doing so well. Your manners neared distinctly passable when the awe came up, and then..." Hikaru gestured in the moonlight. He stared at this man, one of the oddities of an entire kingdom, and his friend. "Tell me more. The Georgia stories." He surprised himself by adding, "and anywhere nearby you travelled to."

-

When McCoy was finally due to get onto the boat that would - that might, across stretches of ocean incredible to contemplate - take him home, he nearly glared into Hikaru's eyes. "You want to come with me."

"That has no bearing on anything. I have my home and duties here."

"You would bring back new knowledge. You'd be a credit to your family - you'd put all those skills of yours that you're so proud of to good use. You weren't made to sit idle, my prince.

"Besides, I could still teach you a thing or two."

"Do you mean - McCoy, are you _really_ talking about that now?"

"It's been on my mind. It's been my assigned job for it to be on my mind, as a courtesan. Hard to get rid of that ... especially when every word you said made you seem more and more like someone I could want to get to know better.

He wouldn't be a prince anymore if he climbed on that ship. Not to the eyes of any others - McCoy least of all, nearly, as he had never adjusted his reaction to Hikaru one jot. The most honest man he had encountered in his life, predicting a future for Hikaru that resonated deep in his heart. For Hikaru, and with Hikaru.

Hikaru took McCoy's hand. He brought it to his lips, and McCoy pulled it closer to touch his chest in the centre, above the place where his heart beat.


End file.
